This year, Duke’s undergraduate Class of 2019 included 303 students who participated in Bass Connections at some point in their four years. Forty-one percent of these Bass Connections team members submitted a senior thesis, compared to 27 percent of all Trinity students.

For some students, taking part in engaged interdisciplinary research through Bass Connections project teams or summer programs confirmed their interests; for others, the experience opened up entirely new paths. Many students found ways to take their research further through opportunities within Duke and beyond.

These are some of the students who chose to leverage their Bass Connections participation for a thesis leading to Graduation with Distinction in May 2019.

Aashna Aggarwal

• Economics thesis: Evaluating Economic Impacts of Electrification in Zambia
• Bass Connections: From the Ground Up: The Business and Policy Landscape for Energy Access in Zambia
• Listen to Powering Rural Africa

Chaya Bhat

• Global Health thesis: Understanding the Development and Feasibility of an SMS Chatbot in Treating Perinatal Depression in Kenya
• Bass Connections: Global Mental Health Program
• See DGHI Celebrates Graduation of 47 Global Health Undergraduates

Luke Farrell and Jake Shulman

• Computer Science thesis: Detecting Partisan Gerrymandering: Stratified Sampling the Space of Possible North Carolina Congressional Redistrictings
• Bass Connections: Gerrymandering and the Extent of Democracy in America
• See Senior Spotlight: Using Math to Fight Gerrymandering

Ryan Fitzgerald

• Global Health thesis: Ecological Modeling for Public Health: Predicting Hotspots of Human and Vector Contact in Rural Madagascar
• Bass Connections: How Do People Affect Zoonotic Disease Dynamics in Madagascar?
• See Two Months in Madagascar Studying the Ecology of Infectious Diseases

Youlim Kim

• Biology thesis: The Blue Devil Resistome: Antibiotic Resistance Transfer from the Environment to the Lab at Duke University
• Bass Connections: Blue Devil Resistome Project
• See Exploring Duke’s Microbiome

Briana Kleiner

• Environmental Sciences & Policy thesis: Understanding Fishing Communities and Conservation: GT-Kino
• Bass Connections: Human-wildlife Interactions at Sea

Julia Knorr

• Environmental Sciences thesis: The Answer’s in the Gut: An Investigation of African Forest Elephant Ingestion, Digestion and Defecation on Chrysophyllum lacourtianum Germination and Growth
• Bass Connections: Mega-gardeners of Tropical Forests: Modeling Seed Dispersal by Forest Elephants

Kelsey Lansdale

• Environmental Sciences & Policy thesis: Predictions of Human Exposure Pathways to Mercury Using Alternative Diet Scenarios in Madre de Dios, Peru
• Bass Connections: Environmental Epidemiology in Latin America
• See Ten Lessons Learned in the Peruvian Amazon

Eliza Letourneau

• Environmental Sciences thesis: Differential Risk of Human Exposure to Mercury through Fish Consumption in Madre de Dios, Peru
• Bass Connections: Environmental Epidemiology in Latin America

Kerry Mallinson

• Biology and Global Health thesis: Evaluating Rhinovirus Prevalence among Pneumonia Patients in Sarawak, Malaysia
• Bass Connections: Building Capacity for Surveillance and Diagnosis of Respiratory Viruses in Sarawak, Malaysia
• See Student Virus Detectives Explore What’s in the Air in Malaysia

Chinemerem Nwosu

• Program II thesis: Evaluating the Impact of Caretaker Health Literacy on Delays in Care for Traumatic Brain Injury Patients in Uganda
• Bass Connections: Interventions Improving Neurosurgery Patient Outcomes in Uganda
• See Student Develops Health Literacy Tools to Empower Patient Caregivers

Ajilé Owens

• Global Health and Sociology thesis: The Importance of Social Networks in Disease Transmission and Information Interventions in a Tropical, Rural Environment
• Bass Connections: How Do People Affect Zoonotic Disease Dynamics in Madagascar?
• See Two Months in Madagascar Studying the Ecology of Infectious Diseases

Hemal Patel

• Economics and Global Health thesis: The Effect of Tourism on Child Health Outcomes in Roatán, Honduras
• Bass Connections: Global Health Student Research Training (Saving Sight: Roatán) 
• See Off the Beaten Path

Luiza Perez

• Global Health and Sociology thesis: Maternal and Reproductive Health Sets the Stage for Child Health: Looking beyond Early Childhood in the Peruvian Amazon
• Bass Connections: Environmental Epidemiology in Latin America
• See Bass Connections Marks Five Years of Real-world Solutions

Samantha Sadler

• Global Health thesis: Infection Control from an Emic Perspective: Forming and Evaluating a Local Infection Control Team in a Low-Resource Neurosurgical Ward
• Bass Connections: Evaluating Interventions Aimed at Improving Neurosurgical Patient Outcomes in Uganda
• See Obstacles Inspire an Alternative Approach to Infection Care in Uganda

Caleigh Smith

• Global Health thesis: Medical Pluralism in Beliefs and Practices Surrounding Epilepsy Care in Uganda
• Bass Connections: Cultural and Practical Barriers to Epilepsy Care in Uganda

Kathryn Watkins

• Global Health thesis: Influence of Social Support on Childhood Vaccine Uptake in a Migrant Community in Roatan, Honduras
• Bass Connections: mHealth for Better Routine Immunization Data in Honduras
• See Team Develops mHealth App to Improve Collection, Access and Storage of Vaccination Data

Claire Wiebe

• Mathematics thesis: Analyzing the Effects of Partisan Correlation on Election Outcomes Using Order Statistics
• Bass Connections: Gerrymandering and the Extent of Democracy in America

Natalie Chin Wen Yu

• Program II thesis: So You Think You Can Accelerate? A Qualitative Study of Accelerator Program Design and Perceived Helpfulness to Scaling Healthcare Innovation
• Bass Connections: Global Alliance on Disability and Health Innovation (GANDHI)

Learn More

• See how other students have leveraged their research for theses and dissertations.
• View stories from Bass Connections student team members.
• Learn what some Bass Connections alumni are doing now.